Word
Het is de schijnheilige buurman die stookt.
Meaning
It is the hypocritical neighbor who stirs up trouble.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Het is de schijnheilige buurman die stookt.
zijn
to be
het
it
de buurman
the neighbor (male)
die
who / that (relative pronoun)
Questions & Answers about Het is de schijnheilige buurman die stookt.
The verb stoken usually means to heat a house or light a fire. How does it mean "stirs up trouble" here?
In Dutch, stoken literally means to fuel a fire. Metaphorically, it is used to mean "fanning the flames" of conflict, sowing discord, or instigating trouble between people. You will often see a troublemaker referred to as an onruststoker.
Why does the sentence start with Het is when buurman is a de-word? Shouldn't the pronoun match?
This is a cleft sentence, which is a structure used to emphasize a specific part of a sentence (it was the neighbor who did it, not someone else). Just like in English, Dutch uses a fixed, neutral dummy subject to introduce this structure: Het is... ("It is..."). The pronoun het does not change to match the gender of the noun that follows.
How does the word schijnheilige break down?
It is a compound of schijn (appearance, illusion, or fake) and heilig (holy, saintly). A schijnheilig person is someone who puts on a "fake holy" appearance—a hypocrite! The -e on the end is simply the standard adjective inflection because it comes before the noun buurman.
Why do we use die for "who" instead of wie?